Perfect Pergola

We have had a count down for two years to prepare for our new ceremony site.  The stage of the pergola had been built, so it was time to get our stain on!  The trouble with April and May was that it rained.  A lot.  I’m not complaining about the rain because we have gone without it for several years.  However, when it comes to brides, you can’t let them down.  Our entire staff knew of our first outdoor ceremony of the year because we had their names posted for weeks to distinguish our goal date.

In the end, we finally gave up waiting for the rain to stop or for the temperatures to warm up and got our stain on the Wednesday before our first wedding ceremony.

It was a gloomy day, but we had a lot of fun.  Kim and I got to work staining the pergola.  I had to stick my head up through the slats on the top, so my hair had turned white by the end of the day.  Kim has a infamous saying, “Let’s just knock this out.”  She always tells me that to make it seem like it’ll be the easiest job to get done.  She assured me that we’d be able to knock this out before the rain came.  Toward the afternoon, we started to get worried that Kim was a bit ambitious, so my mom and Theresa joined in on the fun.

Although this looks like paint, it is actually a white stain.  It went on beautifully and covered the pergola really well.  We were all waiting for the final moment when we could move on to the floor!  The limestone pavers had been laid earlier in the week in the rain, so they were covered in mud.  Austin got those scrubbed clean (while my daughter supervised) and the four of us gals finished that pergola about two hours before the rain started.  Luckily, it only has to dry for it to cure, so we were in good shape.

We were really pleased with the results.  On Saturday, Alex and Max got to be our very first ceremony to take place at our new ceremony site.  Everyone was so very excited about it.  Luckily, the weather on Saturday couldn’t have been more perfect if we had ordered in the weather ourselves.

It was a fun rush until the end, but we are so happy to have this journey of the ceremony site come to an end!

For a look back at how far we have come, check out these posts:

• Building the peninsula
• Trying to seed the peninsula
• Install irrigation on the peninsula
• Install electricity and speaker wire
• We have grass
• Building the pergola
• Putting in the pergola’s stage